New and Selected Essays

by Denise Levertov

  Her equine connections are with the same unconscious animal force and fertility as these of Pbseidon, who, if he took her in his equine form, as most accounts assert, came sweeping into Athene’s temple with white mane flowing, a tidal wave with thundering hooves, his sperm the color of milky jade you may see as the breakers turn at the shoreline. The great oceanic horse is beautiful; but Medusa’s horse aspect is part of her malignity.

  This monstrous mother, whose hands were bronze, whose wings were brass, whose teeth were tusks, and her hair a writhing mass of snakes, was the only mortal among triplet sisters. Her serpentine hair is said to have been given her by Athene, furious at the desecration of her temple; but since all her siblings and half-siblings were monsters, it seems that her malign nature existed potentially even before her appearance became hideous. Her significance has been perceived as incarnating perverted impulses: a refusal of harmony, a wilful wickedness, rather than an incapacity for goodness. The word Gorgon is related to gargle, gurgle, and gargoyle: Medusa has been called “a shriek personified.” All who gazed upon her were instantly petrified—paralyzed by the full, unveiled, unmediated vision of evil. The fact that Perseus managed to get close enough to sever her neck without himself being turned to stone, by the ruse of focussing on her mirror image—that mirror being indeed his shield—seems to suggest the way in which art provides a mode of perceiving evil and terror without being immobilized, but on the contrary enabled to come to grips with them. Frobenius saw in the Gorgon a symbol of the fusion of opposites; however, Medusa’s refusal of internal harmony results in a stasis of conflict, not a positive synthesis. The components of her presence are utterly disparate and remain so. Her face, even though depicted as having elements of beauty, is contorted in a frightful snarl, as if she horrifies even herself. Contemplation of such “fusion,” such simultaneity of warring elements, can kill—that is, it can defeat or explode the conscious rational mind, for it reveals a state beyond linear reach. But the experience of poetry provides, like the mirror of Perseus, a means for human consciousness to transcend the linear and by fitful glimpses, at least, to attain a vision of ultimate harmony, of reconciliation, not exclusion nor dilution. Thus the significance of the shielding mirror prefigures the reconciling aspect of Pegasus himself, as we shall see.

  Erich Neumann, with a Jungian perspective, describes Perseus’s mirror strategy as a raising into consciousness of an image which paralyzes only as long as it remains unconscious; and he makes a point of the pun of reflection inherent in the story. I would by no means dispute this; but his account is concerned with the universal psychological principles carried in the myth; whereas, for poets, the myth’s particular significance is not the attainment of consciousness as such but the transformation and activating of conscious and unconscious experience brought about by the Imination. And it is notable that when Neumann turns from Perseus and his mirror to Pegasus, he identifies the latter as the released “spiritual libido of the Gorgon,” (my italics) who “combines the spirituality of the bird with the horse character of the Gorgon.” (Here it is of interest to note that according to one account, it was as a bird that Poseidon came to the then fair Medusa, in that flowery meadow within the precincts of Athene’s calm temple, and not as a wild horse. A sea bird, it would have been, with its hungry cry and fishhook beak, fierce-eyed, as apt to dive under the tossing surface as to glide and hover on the salt breezes; symbolic, as bird, of spirit, but yet a wild spirit.)

  HIS NATURE AND ASSOCIATIONS

  Pegasus issues from the blood of Medusa (and specifically from her neck, that area of transition between two territories, mental and physical). Medusa, though able to embody opposites (the dual nature of the earth mother, fertile yet destructive; or, in later manifestations, her youthful beauty and subsequent ugliness) was not capable of so mingling them as to transform and transcend their conflict, for all her energy is expressed in wilful spite. But from the conjunction within her of Poseidon’s undifferentiated, everflowing energy and her own fixed intensity is born—or wrested out of her by a slash of the sickle—a new “fusion of opposites”: one that is more truly a fusion: Pegasus. The earthy, physical horse is all complete—not, as in the centaur, the hippocampus, or the hippogriff, half horse and half man or fish or griffin, and not, as in his half-brother Arion, the horse with two human feet and the power of speech. Nor does Pegasus undergo periodic meetamorphosis into a bird. He is at all times a horse (and a sexually potent one, for though no mate or offspring of his is ever mentioned, he is referred to as a stallion). He is a perfect horse; but a horse possessed of the superlative enhancement of wings. The development of horse symbolism from cthonic darkness and malign associations to the glorious team that draws the chariot of the sun is recapitulated in the development of the Pegasus legends, the earliest of which accord him no wings, and in his story itself, which depicts spiritual energy rising from such murky sources. In him contrasts are reconciled, and not by the disappearance of their characteristics but by their new and harmonious combination.

  Poets—not, let it be emphasized, in their personal human aspect (or not in any greater degree than for any other individuals in whom the imagination is alive), but in the activity of poem-making—possess like Pegasus some inherent power of exaltation. But it is equally important to recognize that Pegasus was not constantly airborne. It was by striking his sharp hoof hard upon the rocky earth that Pegasus released the fountain of Hippocrene, the fountain of poetic inspiration henceforth sacred to the Muses. (Some say, too, that it was not until the moment that Medusa’s blood, spurting from her neck, touched earth that he became manifest.) Poet and poem must strike hard and sink deep into the material to tap spiritual springs or give new birth to “the winged fountain.”

  In poetry we may observe traits of the parents as well as of Pegasus himself. There are poems vast, restless, almost formless, yet powerful, which evoke the character of Poseidon and the ocean’s tidal rhythms. There are Medusan poems of rage and hatred, sharp-clawed with satire, writhing with serpentine humor and flashing forth venomous tongues of denunciation or despair.

  And then there are those, far more numerous, which in various proportions combine, like Pegasus himself, earth and air; and it is these, not those in which the traits of Poseidon or Medusa dominate, that are most representatively poems. They may walk, trot, or gallop, but have the inherent power to soar aloft. Some poets hold this power in reserve, keeping Pegasus on a tight rein; others avail themselves of it with more or less frequency. Such flights are not to be equaled with abstraction, as may too easily be done if one assumes that the earthy horse represents the concrete and the wing the abstract. Pegasus as horse does indeed present the sensual, the sensuous, the concretely specific, but that physicality is itself related to the unconscious—and not only to the instinctive but to the intuitive as well. And his wings, which do not deform but increase and enhance his equine characteristics of speed and strength of motion, express not the abstractions of linear intellection but the transcendent and transformative power of Imagination itself.

  But it would be no service to the understanding of poetry’s essential nature and the poet’s vocation to smooth over its stern or demonic aspects. Pegasus, sired by a ruthless god, born in violence of an abhorrent monstrosity, is himself a daimon, a force, an energy. He is, as Heine put it, not a virtuous utilitarian hack; nor is he a children’s pet. Bellerophon only tames him with the help of a magical golden bridle, the gift of Athene. It is a beneficent act to help destroy the devastating Chimaera, whose three heads—of a goat, a snake, and a lion—embody licentiousness, insidious venom, and ruthless dominance; and the story reveals in parable that inspiration, not courage and strategy alone, overcomes these evils. Yet, not himself destructive, Pegasus, by lending to Bellerophon his indispensible swiftness and power to rise aloft, has become accessory to a killing. As a flying cloud, he may carry lifegiving showers, but also can bring the devastation of flash floods. And after Bellerophon’s hero-deed is done, it
is the speed and levitational power of his steed that tempt him to hubris. Extreme speed is a way of referring to a kind of excessive cloquence, the words tumbling out too fast for coherence, and too many for each to be just and indispensible. A poet flying high and swiftly becomes a kind of bird, whose speech is not intelligible to humankind; or a breath of the storm-wind, which breaks what it sweeps over. Pegasus, anciently known as accursed as well as blessed, in latter days can perhaps be seen in this aspect as the steed of poets wilfully abstruse or brutally verbose. Finally, Bellerophon attempts to fly upon him to Olympus—and then Pegasus throws him. Whether Zeus sent a gadfly to sting him into this action, or he himself resented Bellerophon’s presumption, the glorious familiar becomes instrumental in the hero’s fall from grace, both by being that which (innocently) tempts and that which, misused, refuses further cooperation. Thereafter Pegasus is translated to the Olympian stables and becomes the bearer of thunder and lightning “at the behest of prudent Zeus”: of those tremendous words from an apparent nowhere (“out of the sky,” as we say) sounding within the mind or out in the bustling world, which come sometimes to strike us with terror or remorse, to illumine some obscure history or to reveal in a flash an abyss at our feet.

  Eos, the dawn, sometimes rides Pegasus, bringing a saffron shimmer of first light. This daybreak appearance may bring to mind the astonishing poetry occasionally uttered (and occasionally written down) by young children, and also the poetic efflorescence that often takes place in adolescence. But like that of early morning sunshine, these promises are not always fulfilled. The poet of extraordinary gifts who early produces major work and dies very young is, or has become, a rarity; and the earliest work of those who live longer is seldom of more than historical interest. It is the pristine value of initial inspirations that Pegasus more aptly signifies when regarded as the horse of dawn. No matter what metamorphoses poem or stanza or image may have to pass through to become all that it can, its source and first appearance should not be despised.

  Mantegna depicted Pegasus with Hermes. I have not found a source for this association, but since the painting shows the gods foregathered, one may suppose that after the downfall of Bellerophon, Zeus having summoned him to the Olympian heights, Pegasus and wingfooted Hermes would naturally be drawn to one another. Hermes is the god of fresh wind, who clears the skies; of travellers; of cunning wiles; of eloquence; guardian of flocks; messenger and psychopomp: a fit companion for one with the attributes of Pegasus. If Pegasus struck forth the fountain of inspiration, it was Hermes who invented the lyre. Indeed, the two share so much that one may take that list and apply much of it to the winged horse—swift as the wind, a potential benefactor of travellers, provider of the springs of eloquence. And though we don’t find in Pegasus specific parallels for Hermes’ cunning and trickery nor for his shepherd role, affinities with them are easily discernable in poets and poetry.

  Jane Harrison, in Themis, speaks in passing of Pegasus “receiving” Dionysos at Eleutherae; being given, that is, in a powerful and unmistakable flash of recognition, the perception of a divinity. If it is indeed our Pegasus she refers to, I would interpret this event as emblematic of the way in which creative power has no upper limit; a sublime potential remains even when poetry has seemed to fly to the extremes of its own possibility.

  HIS SIBLINGS

  The offspring of Poseidon are many. There are a few who seem, however, to have a special relation to Pegasus. First of these is Chrysaor, his unidentical twin, formed like a man of great size and splendor and bearing, who stepped out of Medusa’s spilt blood bearing a huge golden sword. Subsequently he united with “great Ocean’s daughter,” Callirhoe, whose name means Beautiful Stream, and fathered the monster Geryon whom Heracles later killed. Then we hear no more of him, as if he had sunk beneath the waves he wedded, carried by that river out into deep ocean. In him we may see figured the mind that never comes to consciousness. Born of the unconscious and the nightmare, it struggles as far as the beauty of one stream, plunges in, and is borne away, leaving behind only an aberrant production soon to vanish in its turn; just as an individual may produce one unfinished unshaped poem. The figure of Chrysaor also suggests wasted talent: mighty in appearance and with that attribute, the golden sword, yet he does no deeds and has no story.

  Arion, with human speech and a trace of human form—two of his four feet—was one of the many half-brothers; his mother was Demeter, who had taken on the form of a mare when Poseidon, as a stallion, pursued her. Arion was dark and powerful and was ridden by Heracles and by Adrastus (survivor of the “Seven against Thebes”). Here is language without poetry, at the service of action; a plain prose. In contrast, Pegasus himself, not endowed with speech, yet acts as divining rod for the poetic fountain.

  The third sibling relevant to my theme is Bellerophon. For though supposedly the son of Glaucus, Hesiod reveals that in fact Poseidon withered him by the wife of Glaucus, and that it was he who provided Pegasus to help Bellerophon in his adventure. Bellerophon’s ostensible father, Glaucus, was trampled and killed by his own horses, whom Aphrodite had driven mad in revenge for some offense. (It is the ghost of Glaucus that horses are seeing when some inexplicable terror makes them stall and rear.) But Bellerophon himself is a notable horseman. Though there is no identification of him as a poet, his close association with Pegasus, with springs and flying, as well as the inspired ingenuity with which he avails himself of his magical familiar in the strategy for slaying the Chimaera, suggest that he may stand for one. Or rather, if we look upon him and Pegasus together as forming a whole (as horse and rider do when, both superb, they are perfectly attuned to one another) then Bellerophon, to whom a golden bridle was given by Athene, goddess of vigilant and industrious intelligence, stands for the craft and skill necessary to the full activity of inspiration and creative imagination. Each needs the other for the fulfillment of his powers. Hawthorne, speaking as always in parables, tells that Bellerophon, after he first tamed him, offered Pegasus his freedom. Pegasus took flight, circled the skies, and once more spiralled down—returning voluntarily. And once again, when the Chimaera’s bones and ashes lie strewn across the plain, the rider frees the steed, and is refused. Once craft and imagination have endured together the struggle to slay a monster or create a poem, imagination does not just fly off never to return. Pegasus was never really tamed, never broken like a common horse; it is only through the magic of special, goddess-given dream-intelligence that Bellerophon is able to exercise his regular equestrian skills upon him. He freely chooses to remain, as a comrade. Only when humility is lost and arrogant technique assumes it can assault heaven itself does the rider fall and the winged horse soar beyond reach.

  CONCLUSION

  In reviewing what Pegasus has to tell us about the poet, I find these correspondences:

  The poet inherits a protean and unconscious power: fertile, amoral, capable of shaking mountains or of shaking dry seeds to life. The poet also inherits heterogeneities strange as Medusa’s, whose distorted human face looked out from so anomalous a collection of bodily traits—snakes and claws, wings and scales. These gorgonic features correspond to the quaking magma of emotion which, in poems of autobiographical confession or furious opinion, smothers response and turns to stone the minds over which it flows. The poet’s inherent contradictions vary, in kind and in proportion, with the individual; but the archetypal poet, being also a representative Human Being, “Man (or Woman) the Analogist,” contains the potential for many intensities, for all the passions and all the appetites; and—on a more differentiated level—for satire and sentiment, thundering prophecy and delicate nuance, comedy and the sublime. The poet has to be both a dreamy visionary and a meticulous and energetic worker, though often tormented by those conflicting needs.

  The poet (always, I must reemphasize, in the work of poetry, and not in his or her mundane individuality) reconciles these disparities and incongruities. Here we see Pegasus as a metaphor for the poem rather than the poet. We must t
ake his emergence from gorgon and sea-god as a given; the poem, correspondingly emerging from the poet, an autonomous third term, results from an alchemy scarcely less mysterious. Like Pegasus, the poet (and the poem too) is animal. Fully a horse, Pegasus is not particularly intellectual. His intelligence is intuitive. But a fine horse is alert in every rippling muscle; its ears, its nostrils, reflect complex awarenesses. And it is as consistent, as harmonious throughout its being, as Medusa was inharmonious. Even the excrement of a horse takes the form of neat spheres, like brown tennis-balls, full of grain for sparrows and pigeons. The poet as animal is human, and must accept and explore all that he or she incorporates—the gift of the senses, the gifts of memory and language and intellectual discernment, and, too, the burden or curse entailed in each of these gifts or blessings. Above all the poet must treasure the gift of intuition which transcends the limitations of deductive reasoning.

  To say that the poem, as well as the poet, is animal means that it has its own flesh and blood and is not a rarified and insubstantial thing. It is compact of sounds, gutteral or sibilant, round or thin, lilting or abrupt, in all their play of pitch and rhythm, durations and varied pace, their dance in and with silence. Even its marriage to the Euclidean beauty of syntax is a passionate and very physical love affair; often it pulls the gravity and abstract elegance of grammar into that dance to whirl like a Maenad.